Our ISP here was out this afternoon. (Cable and internet) for a bit before I had to run to an appointment, so I got a bit behind in entries. It’s interesting though, Charter has been really pushing their new telephone service lately. Which is all well and good, but I’ve thought many times, if I were to get phone service from Charter how many times a year I’d be without phone service? How would I have called to report the outage today? (Carrier pigeon) – cell phone is the expected answer I’m sure, but….
Category: General Web/Tech
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Wikipedia tightening rules
The wikipedia is changing their rules a bit, to prevent anonymous users from creating new articles. Now to create an article, you must be logged in with an account. This is in part a response to a couple of recent stories about articles that were edited anonymously. Eventually I see it making sense to have users log in for ANY change to be made to an article create/edit/delete/etc. I know it may seem like a pain, but ultimately that would make it easier to trace an editor that was doing harm to the content.
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Online music locker
The Oboe service has launched. It’s a project that Michael Robertson of Mp3.com and Lindows/Linspire fame has been building interest in for the last 6 months or so. (Maybe a bit longer). The idea is that for a $39 per year subscription you can have an unlimited amount of space online to store your music files (.mp3, .wma, .ogg or .acc are autodetected in download links by the firefox plugin.) Then you can stream them anywhere. What’s interesting about the browser plugin is – let’s say you’re buying a track at the web site of whichever online music store, an icon appears next to the download link, you click and it “sideloads” the file into your online storage locker (bypassing the step of downloading to your pc, then uploading to the storage locker.)
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More free online book resources
A while back there was an article on Google Print alternatives. Today, Search Engine Watch has an article on a couple other options. First up is Netlibrary.com, which provides free access to a wide range of etexts. Access is not to the general public, but through partner institutions. For instance, if your public library partners with netlibrary, you can enter your library card number and log in.
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EFF gives up on DMCA exemption process
There’s a story over at PC Pro, that says the EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) has given up on the process for obtaining exemptions from the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act). They claim that the three year exemption period is meaningless. All of their requests for exemptions have been declined. Including requests to allow DVD purchasers to be able to play DVD’s purchased from any region, to allow CD purchasers to play copy protected discs on a PC, and to allow skipping of “unskippable” ads at the beginning of DVDs.
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Risk using Google Maps shut down.
I’m afraid it was something I expected would happen, *(although you always hope a company will look on such imitation as a form of flattery and be cooperative/excited about the new application of an old game idea…), but the implementation of the strategy game Risk using Google Maps has been shut down by a cease and desist letter from lawyers retained by Hasbro.
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The secret to search engine rankings
I just read this guide to link building and he’s right on the mark…. 🙂 I don’t know how many times I’ve come to the same conclusion he did as the only way to have your site rank well. Read it and enjoy “the secret”.
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The challenge of online content
The Open Source blog at zdnet has an article today on the Wikipedia. “Is Wikipedia a threat or a menace?” is the title… (which doesn’t give leeway for it to be a good thing I guess…) Anyway it raises an interesting point. Over the last few days there was a lot of press about (from the article above) “John Siegenthaler, a former Kennedy aide who found that his own entry falsely called him a suspect in his boss’ murder.” Now the Wikipedia is an online collaborated encyclopedia. Anyone can sign up and start editing whether it’s fact or not. There is a great responsibility to this…
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Non-public database abuse
There is an interesting story at the SecurityFix on an individual who has been sentenced for using access to non-public LexisNexis searching to do background checks on, among other’s police who she though was investigating her for prostitution.